Research and Development
by Northumbrian
Summary: The Mirrorphone, the latest advance in Wizarding communications. Now, of course, everyone seems to own one. The kids seem to be incapable of living without the device. How did it happen? Who was responsible for the design? To find out we must return to the year 2000.


**Mark One**

George Weasley found himself standing on a pebble beach. The Portkey which had brought him from his shop to this unfamiliar location was now no more than an empty crisp packet. He glanced around, but there were no litter bins nearby, so he pushed the packet into the pocket of his jacket. Satisfied that there was no one in sight, he removed his invisibility cloak and carefully folded it. Placing the cloak inside his briefcase, he snapped it shut and took in the sights and sounds of a new and unfamiliar place.

To George's right was a calm and still inlet on which dozens of small boats bobbed; all were tethered to buoys. On the other side of the water were farmland, and the rolling green distant hills. To his immediate left was a stone wall on which the slick sea moss showed that, at high tide, the water would be waist high. George examined the wall carefully, and wondered whether Ron had bothered to check the tides before he'd set the Portkey. Above the wall, George could see roofs, so he turned and strolled up a concrete ramp. Moments later he was standing on a pleasant and surprisingly quiet road which followed the shoreline.

Crossing the road, George made his way towards a street of old terraced houses. The properties were all plaster rendered, and each was painted in a different pale pastel colour. As he approached the houses, George began to concentrate on his destination.

'Ginny Weasley lives at five, West Terrace,' he muttered to himself.

The terrace shimmered and shifted, and a beige painted property sidled away from its cream-coloured neighbour to reveal an additional, pale green, property which had somehow been hiding between them. The front door and the frames of the fanlight above it were painted a bright emerald green. A large brass number five affixed to the door confirmed that he was in the right place. George pulled open the black wrought iron gate and once again vanished from Muggle view. As he walked down the short path, the front door opened and Ginny stepped out to greet him.

'Hello guinea-pig,' said George, as he hugged his sister. 'How are you settling into your new place? More importantly, when's the housewarming party?'

'You don't suit the beard, George,' Ginny told her brother firmly. 'I'm settled, thanks, but there won't be a housewarming party. I definitely won't be inviting anyone here. I can't, because I'm not the Secret Keeper. Besides, I've had enough parties for a while, they were affecting my form.'

'So you're serious about trying to get selected for the England Squad?' George asked. 'Well done for getting to their training camp, by the way.'

'Thanks. I was almost guaranteed a place on at least the Under-21s squad until the "Hellions" incident,' said Ginny. There was only the slightest hint of bitterness in her voice. 'Now, all I can do is hope that I managed to impress the selectors during the camp. Wish me luck.'

'Good luck,' said George automatically.

'You found the place okay?' Ginny asked. 'No problems with the Fidelius Charm?'

'It seems to be working okay,' George told her. 'Yesterday, when Harry told me where to find you, he said that he hasn't even told Mum and Dad where you live! I've no idea how you two managed to keep Mum away.'

'We told her that we were still trying to get the Fidelius Charm working properly, which was partly true. Harry will tell them my new address on Sunday,' said Ginny.

'Ron told me that the Harpies management were demanding to know your address, too,' said George.

'They were. I went to a management meeting about it yesterday, and Harry came with me. You know my contract contains a clause requiring me to live on Ynys Môn, the Isle of Anglesea; everyone who plays for the Harpies has to live here,' Ginny told him.

George nodded.

'Harry was very reasonable with the management team,' Ginny continued. George watched his sister's face light up as she recalled the meeting, and felt a pang of jealousy and annoyance. The second anniversary of The Battle was approaching. Fred had been dead less than two years, but everyone seemed to have forgotten him. Everyone was pairing off, and Bill was about to become a father.

'Are you okay, George?' Ginny asked.

'Why wouldn't I be?' he countered, forcing his smile back onto his face.

'You looked down for a moment,' Ginny said. 'Are you...'

'Just tell me about Harry,' George told her. His sister stared into his face, shrugged, and continued her tale.

'Harry reminded them that the apartment _they_ found for me when I started at the club was no longer secure. He told the directors that, as I'd been drugged and then burgled at the last place, he wasn't prepared to tell anyone my new address. As a compromise he said that he would personally guarantee that I had a house on Ynys Môn. The Managing Director wasn't happy; she threatened to take Harry to court.'

'Blimey!' said George, 'What did Harry do?'

Ginny's face broadened into a smile. 'He reminded her that the last time he'd been threatened him with legal action was by a solicitor called Tavistock. At which point Tavistock's replacement, Nicola Macallan, suggested that the club didn't actually need to know the address, provided that they could be certain that I wasn't breaking my contract. I offered to take Veritaserum, to confirm that my house was on the island, and that was good enough for Nicola.'

George laughed. 'Good to see the Harpies have got a more sensible solicitor than that pompous prat Tavistock.' He turned and gestured across the street to the open water beyond. 'You've got a nice view of the sea.'

'It's not the sea, George,' said Ginny as she stepped aside and motioned for him to enter. 'It's the Menai Strait. On a clear day you can see Bangor, if you want to look at Bangor.'

Ginny led her brother down the hall and into the living room, where a trapezoidal bay window gave a magnificent view over the Strait.

'Make yourself at home,' she said, indicating the sofa and sinking down into the only armchair in the room.

'Nice place,' George said. 'And a lot bigger than you need. Are you sure you can afford it?'

'The Harpies have renewed my contract, and if I get a place on the England squad I'll get even more,' said Ginny. 'And I'm thinking of taking in a lodger, one of the other Harpies players. Plus I've been approached about another sponsorship deal, this time for a training Quaffle.'

'Lucky you! So, your rich boyfriend isn't funding this place? Where is he, by the way?' George asked, listening carefully just in case Harry was hiding somewhere. 'He said he'd bring me here, but when I flooed to Grimmauld Place this morning Kreacher told me that he was out, and that "Master Ronald" had created a Portkey for me.'

George looked around the room. It was light, bright, high-ceilinged and sparsely furnished. There was a glass-topped coffee table between the armchair and the sofa, and a wireless on a stand on the wall opposite the fireplace, and that was all.

'Harry offered to buy the place outright. I said no,' Ginny told her brother. 'He was supposed to be here today, but he's working, following up a lead. He's in the other Bangor, of all places. The Irish one, not the Welsh one,' she explained. 'He's with Ron and Neville, they are following up a reported sighting of Daphne Greengrass. They aren't hopeful, but they're checking it out anyway.'

'All three of them?' asked George mischievously. 'A few weeks ago Harry told me he was trying to persuade Robards to allow Aurors to work in pairs. I can count, you know. I know that Harry, Ron and Neville don't make a pair. Or doesn't Ron count?'

'Of course Ron counts' Ginny said. 'After the Harpies game last weekend, Harry and I talked about his proposals for reorganisation. I pointed out that he seems to work best when he has two henchmen, not just one.'

'True,' said George, chuckling. 'At least, that certainly worked for him at school. But, these days, he seems to be happiest as one half of a couple.'

Ginny smiled happily. 'Thank you,' she said. 'A compliment from lugless Georgie! Whatever next? What about you?' she asked. 'I hear that you're single again. Who will you bring to The Burrow next Sunday? Assuming you'll be there.'

'Of course I'll be there,' George assured her. 'A man has to have at least one decent meal every fortnight. I don't think I want another girl, Ginny, not yet, anyway. I don't care what you think, I've never been anything but single. I've been single since The Battle.' George paused, and stared out of the window and into the distance. 'I won't be bringing anyone to The Burrow with me this weekend. You've obviously heard that Julie and I had a huge argument. I expect Ron told you. Julie was getting serious. I wasn't.' George shrugged his shoulders, and pulled himself away from maudlin thoughts. As he looked into his sister's face, he realised that she was reassessing his mood. He knew what would come next, so he hastily forestalled her. He gave Ginny his "No, I don't want to talk about Fred!" look, and placed his briefcase on the table.

Opening the briefcase, he pulled out a magenta cardboard box, placed it on the low table, and beamed proudly at his sister.

'I'm not here to discuss my lack of a girlfriend, or anything else,' he told her firmly. He tapped the box. 'Time is money; I'm here on business! This is only the fifth one of these we've made. This is the Mirrorphone Mark One, the latest advance in Wizarding communications.'

'I can read, George,' Ginny snorted dismissively. 'That's exactly what it says on the box: "The latest advance in Wizarding communications"! You aren't actually trying to sell me it, you know. I'm simply going to test it for you. Why choose me to be your guinea pig?'

'I'd have used Ron, because he's useless and he can break almost anything, but while you've been away at the England training camp, and Harry and Dad have been working on Sirius' motorbike, Ron and Hermione have been helping me with the design the phone. Ron already has one of the original four mirrorphones, and he knows how it works. Even if he hadn't, he's watched Hermione use her Muggle mobile phone. I thought about asking Harry, but he was brought up with Muggles and he knows about telephones. So I asked the only obvious alternative,' said George. He grinned evilly. 'But Percy wasn't interested, either. So in the end I had no other choice. I've been forced to scrape the bottom of the barrel of Weasleys, sister dearest.'

'Obviously,' he continued talking over Ginny's name calling. 'At the moment you'll only be able to contact the four other users, that's me, Ron, Hermione, and Fenella Gray. And that reminds me, Ginny.' George looked serious for a second. 'I'm glad you forced me to agree when Fenella volunteered to help us. She might look weird, but she's an absolute wonder with imaging spells. We'd never have got the text messaging system to work without her.'

'George Weasley,' Ginny scolded. She folded her arms and managed to sound frighteningly like their mother, worrying George. 'You walk in here looking like a malnourished, one-eared orang-utan in a badly fitting suit, and you call Fenella weird-looking? I don't know how you dare! I suppose we'll simply have to put it down to your complete lack of brains and manners.' Ginny stopped, and pondered his words.

'Text messaging?' She repeated the words as though they were a foreign language. 'Text … messaging … that sounds like writing, what is it?'

'It's a method of creating a message for someone else to read on their Mirrorphone,' said George proudly.

'It _is_ writing! Why did you give it such a ridiculous name?' Ginny asked scornfully. 'Text messaging! There are only two ways to communicate, George, talking and writing. What have you decided to call the talking option? Noise messaging?' She snorted dismissively.

'Actually, little miss smart-arse, there are three. You forgot about sign language,' said George, sticking up two fingers at his sister.

Ginny laughed, and returned the gesture.

'According to Hermione, the Muggles call it "text messaging," so we did, too,' George explained. 'I'd never thought about how silly it sounds.'

Ginny picked up the box and opened it. She was confronted by a thick booklet marked "IMPORTANT: Read me first! She set it aside and picked up the blue-painted wooden item. George was about to shout a warning, but she spoke before he could stop her.

'What are the numbered buttons for, and why is the mirror so small?' Ginny asked.

'Damn,' George groaned and put his head in his hands.

'What's the matter?' Ginny asked.

'You didn't read the instructions before you picked it up,' said George.

'Of course I didn't!' said Ginny. She picked up the booklet she'd discarded and waved it at him. 'Just look at it! It's almost as big as this phone thing. I bet Hermione wrote it.'

'She did,' George admitted. The realisation that he was going to have to do a major redesign hit him, and he sighed. Ginny, he knew, would take no prisoners. She immediately proved him right.

'Well then, no one is going to read it,' Ginny told him, brandishing the booklet like a weapon. She shook her head in disbelief. 'Merlin, George! Hermione is my friend, but you know what she's like. If this is anything like her school essays it will be at least twice as complicated, and three times longer, than it actually needs to be. Harry reckons that her Ministry reports are exactly the same. You might as well have it written in Japanese! What have I done wrong?'

'Read,' said George, indicating the leaflet.

She opened it, and read the first page. 'Important: in order to activate the Mirrorphone you must first touch it and speak your name clearly.' She put the phone down, and picked it up again. 'Ginny Weasley,' she said.

'It's too late, Ginny. The mirror is set to register the first words you say when you touch it. That becomes your call sign, and it gives you your telephone number. Can you remember what you said?'

'I asked what the buttons were for, I think. But honestly, George, that's ridiculous,' Ginny told him. 'Why didn't you simply enchant the mirror to say, "please speak your name" when someone touches it? Have you ever read the instructions on anything?'

'Not often,' George admitted. He shook his head in despair. 'Congratulations, Ginny, you've broken it before you've even managed to use it. I'll be back next week with another one.'

'What's a telephone number?' Ginny asked.

'It's the number you dial to contact someone you know,' George explained. 'You press the number buttons, there are letters underneath the numbers, to help.'

'Dial?' asked Ginny. 'Why say dial? There's no dial on this thing?'

'Hermione says you dial a number,' said George, floundering under his sister's cross-examination. 'I've no idea why.'

'Why is the mirror so small?' Ginny continued to press him. 'It will be really difficult to see someone in it. And why do you need to press buttons to contact someone? Surely you could simply speak their name.'

'You can't see anything in the mirror, apart from when you get a text message. We need the mirror to make the magical connection, but we thought we'd keep the screen blank, because we're trying to make it look and act like a Muggle mobile phone,' George explained. 'That's why you press the buttons to contact people, too.'

Ginny's look said, "you're a fool, George" more forcefully and rapidly than any words could.

'Hermione thought it would be a good idea,' he told her hesitantly. He knew what her reaction would be.

'Harry and I spend a lot of time in the Muggle world, and I've watched them. It seems to me that you've copied one particular phone, and I bet it's the one Hermione uses,' said Ginny. 'Muggle phones are all different shapes and sizes. I thought that you were trying to make a magic mirror which can connect to a lot of other mirrors, not to simply copy a piece of Muggle technography.'

George realised that he was squirming in his seat. Sometimes, his sister could make him more uncomfortable than even his mother could.

'You have!' Ginny shouted. 'This is simply an exact copy of Hermione's phone, isn't it? I bet it can do everything her phone can do, and nothing more.' she announced.

'Ron said...' George began. Ginny didn't let him finish.

'Ron said "Hermione is right!" didn't he?' Ginny mimicked Ron's most anxious and pleading tone as she spoke the word's she'd attributed to him, and George knew that it would be much more than a week before he returned.

'Ron has been saying "Hermione is right" for more than two months now,' Ginny continued. 'He's been crawling ever since he made up with her. At the moment, so far as anything to do with Hermione is concerned, he's got less spine than a jellyfish and he's more obsequious than a cornered Malfoy!' Ginny threw up her hands in annoyance. 'I know that he got her drunk, and she made a fool of herself at a Ministry Ball, but that was months ago. Now he's simply being pathetic. It won't be long before even Hermione gets fed up and dumps him again. This time it will be for being such a pathetic wimp!'

Ginny shook her head in despair. 'You know what they're like, George. Usually Ron and Hermione only agree with each other when they've decided which of them is right, and it isn't always Hermione. If you don't tell Ron he's being pathetic, I will. What's wrong with you? Do you only expect to sell the Mirrorphone to Muggle-borns and their moronic boyfriends? Bloody hell, you've called it a Mirrorphone, but you can't even use it as a magic mirror!'

George's face fell. 'You're right,' he admitted. He held up his hands and admitted defeat in the face of Ginny's diatribe. 'We've had loads of rows about the design, but Fenella just left ran away and left us to it. It was two against one.'

Ginny sighed, and began to calm down. 'It's difficult to fight both Ron _and_ Hermione, I know that, George, and so does Harry.'

'Yeah, but you're right, Ginny. We don't need to make it look like a Muggle phone,' George admitted. 'I'll redesign it. My original idea was simply for a mirror which would connect to loads of other mirrors. The few magic mirrors I've seen are too big to fit into a pocket, and this prototype is too small to get a decent image. But if I get rid of the buttons and make it thinner...' George stared out through the window and into infinity as he began to make the necessary changes in his mind. 'I want to keep it small enough to fit in a pocket, like the mobile phones. But we could make it bigger. About this size?' He raised his fist, and extended his forefinger up, and then moved his thumb out at right angles to it.

How big is that?' asked Ginny. 'About two-and-a-half by four-and-a-half inches? That should be okay, provided you make it thinner.'

George sighed. 'When I said a week, I was wrong. Give me a month. Do you want to join the design team?'

Ginny shook her head. 'I'm waiting to hear back from the England Under-21's coach. There's a chance I'll make the team, George. If I do, I will be back in training next week. Do you want me to talk to Ron and Hermione when I see them on Wednesday? I'll give them my feedback.'

'Thanks, Ginny,' said George. 'That would be great. I've got a lot to do. See you at The Burrow on Sunday.'

**Author's Note:**

This story takes place in the weeks after the events of Hunters and Prey, but before the events of Friends and Foes. You don't need to read those stories (although it would be nice if you did). Nevertheless, unless you're very curious about what, exactly, happened between Ron and Hermione, and why Harry and Ron are looking for Daphne Greengrass, this story should stand alone.

Finally, if anyone is interested, with this story I now have a complete alphabet of story titles, from "After Breakfast" to "Zygosis". I'm not sure what this means, other than that I'm obsessive enough to have noticed that I was only missing an "R".


End file.
